Establishment of NDH
Following the attack of the Axis powers on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941, and the quick defeat of the Yugoslav army (Jugoslovenska vojska), the whole country was occupied by the Axis forces. Hitler and Mussolini installed the Croatian Ustaše extremist movement into power, forming the Independent State of Croatia.
Dr. Ante PavelićThe establishment of NDH was proclaimed on April 10, 1941 by Slavko Kvaternik, deputy leader of the Ustaše. The leader of the state was Dr. Ante Pavelić. On paper, it was a kingdom under one Tomislav II of the House of Savoy(The Duke of Spalato), but he had no real power and never even set foot on the territory of the NDH.
The name of the new state was an obvious and successful attempt at capitalizing on the Croat people's desire for independence, which had been unfulfilled since 1102. Vladko Maček the head of the Croatian Peasant Party, the strongest elected party in Croatia at the time, refused an offer from the Germans to head the government but called on people to obey and cooperate with the new government the same day Kvaternik made the proclamation. Ante Pavelić arrived on April 20th to become the poglavnik (correlated with führer). The Roman Catholic Church's official stance was also openly positive in this period.
According to Vladko Maček, the establishment of the state was greeted with approval by the middle classes and the intelligentsia who had become disillusioned with Yugoslavia, but the peasantry had met it with suspicion. The concession of an autonomous Croat province, the Banovina of Croatia, had been too recent (1939) to offset the friction that had marked the last two decades under the militarist regime of the Yugoslav king.
The map of Independent State of Croatia. The rose area indicates the NDH itself, the light green indicates Yugoslav areas annexed by Italy, the dark green indicates areas annexed by Hungary and the blue indicates the territories annexed by Germany. The dashed black line marks the division between German and Italian zones of influence.The state included most of today's Croatia, but with Istria, Kvarner and northern Dalmatia allocated to Italy, and with Međimurje and southern Baranja annexed by Hungary. On the other hand, it spread to all of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. It roughly included the areas of former Austro-Hungarian Empire where Croatian and Serbian were spoken (see image).
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Initial period
The Ustaše initially did not have a capable army or administration necessary to control all of this territory: the movement had fewer than 12,000 members when the war broke out, and not nearly all of them were deployed during the invasion. Therefore the territory was controlled by the Germans and the Italians:
the northeastern half of NDH territory was under the so-called German zone of influence, with the Wehrmacht making its presence
the southwestern half was controlled by the Italian Fascist army. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, NDH acquired northern Dalmatia (Split and Šibenik)
The State would eventually build up its own army, divided into two main groups:
Ustaše proper constituted the elite militia (Croatian Ustaška vojnica)
Home Guard or Domobrani was the much larger regular army
Together they mustered about 110,000 troops by the end of 1942, and about 130,000 in 1943. On the other hand, the NDH had no navy, owing to the terms of the Rome Agreement with Italy, and the air force was modest as well, consisting of about thirty small commercial aircraft.
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Ethnic persecutions
Hitler meets PavelićMuch of the population of the Independent State of Croatia was not Croat, mostly because of the inclusion of Bosnia. It had significant populations of Serbs (about 19% of the population of Croatia at the time, over 30% of the population of NDH), Bosniaks (the largest population group of Bosnia at the time, and over 10% of the population of NDH), Germans, Hungarians and others. The Catholics (mainly Croats, Germans and Magyars) constituted just over 50% of the 6.3 million population. However, today's Bosniaks, at the time, were not allowed to practice Bosniak nationality but were politically directed to be called "Croatians of Islamic faith". Dr. Mile Budak, politican and minister of the NDH - also a Croatian writer- immediately took the oppourtunity to proclaim the Muslims as "Brothers". Many Croatians agree with the idea that the majority of today's Bosniaks are actually Croatians who were converted to Islam during the invasion of the Turks in the 15th Century. Many Bosniaks consider this idea offensive and a product of Croatian nationalism.
Many Bosniaks accepted the NDH (in some cases were forced to accept it) and immediately became involved. The most infamous of Islamic Ustase divisions were known as the "Handzari". Many also joined the SS. In respect to the soldiers of Muslim faith, a mosque was built in Zagreb - Croatia's capital city- known as "Poglavnikova Dzamija" or Poglavnik's Mosque.
The Ustase almost immediately enacted racial laws that reflected the acceptance of the ideology of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with an emphasis placed on Croatian national issues.
1941 "Ž" metal plate for Jewish houses (from Židov=Jew), removed from post office in Osijek.The first "Legal order for the defence of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941. The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdictions.
The normal jails could no longer sustain the rate of new inmates and the Ustaša government started preparing the grounds what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp by July 1941. The regime would eventually form concentration camps in eleven different locations.
Image:Rob nikada.PNG
Rob nikada! (Never Slave!)The Ustaše started conducting a deliberate campaign of mass murder, deportation and forced religious conversion in an attempt to remove the undesirables: Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, dissenting Croats and others. The atrocities against non-Croats started on April 27, 1941 when a newly formed unit of Ustaša army massacred the largely Serbian thorp of Gudovac near Bjelovar.
The Jasenovac complex of five concentration camps would become the place of murder of up to a hundred thousand people (some estimate that this camp was the third largest camp of WWII). Overall Ustaša death count is estimated at around 400,000 people, but all written records were destroyed to cover it up.
By the end of the war the Croatian Serbs were reduced to 14% of the population due to killing or conversion (but also partially by emigration to Vojvodina in 1946/47). The Croatian Jews were all but eliminated, as only one fifth of them survived the war. Many Jews were also deported to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany itself.
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Political and civilian life in the NDH
The previously important civic factors, the Peasant Party (HSS) and the Catholic Church, were reasonably uninvolved in the creation and maintenance of the Independent State of Croatia. All who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were eventually outlawed.
The Ustaša government tried to convene the Croatian Parliament (as Hrvatski državni Sabor NDH) in 1942, with a manually selected list of deputies, but after three short sessions, this mock parliament ceased operation by the end of the same year.
The HSS was banned on June 11, 1941 in an attempt of the Ustaše to take their place as the primary representative of the Croatian peasantry. Vladko Maček was sent to Jasenovac concentration camp, but later released to serve a house arrest sentence due to his popularity among the people. Maček was later again called upon by the foreigners to take a stand and counteract the Pavelić government, but refused.
The Catholic Church participated in religious conversions at first, but eventually the main branches of the Church stopped doing so, as it became obvious that these conversions were merely a lesser form of punishment for the undesirable population. Nevertheless, a number of priests joined the Ustaša ranks. (See also: Involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime.)
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Uprising
Josip Broz TitoThe anti-fascist movement emerged early in 1941, under the command of the Communist party, led by Josip Broz Tito, as in other parts of Yugoslavia. The Croatian Partisans (partizani) began what would come to be known as the War of Liberation in Yugoslavia on June 22, 1941, when their first armed unit was formed in Brezovica near Sisak. The Partisans first engaged in combat on June 27th in Srb in Lika.
Another faction among the rebels were the Chetniks (četnici), the Serbian royalists. The first Chetnik armed unit in Croatia was formed on June 28 (on the day of Vidovdan, a Serb Orthodox holiday).
With increasing atrocities by Ustaše, the Partisans gradually received support from an increasing amount of population. At first they were isolated guerilla units formed in the areas of the atrocities — this is why Partisans were often quoted as being a movement composed mostly of Serbs. Shortly after the Communists started their uprising, the Ustaše incarcerated much of the left-wing inteligentsia in Zagreb, and in an oft-quoted incident of July 9th, 1941, killed Božidar Adžija, Otokar Keršovani, Ognjen Prica and other Croatian communists.
By the end of 1942, the news about the Ustaša atrocities in Jasenovac and elsewhere had also spread among the Croatian population. Noted writers Vladimir Nazor and Ivan Goran Kovačić escaped from the Ustasha-held territory to join the Partisans, and were followed by many more.
On July 13, 1943 a Democratic Republic of Croatia under the leadership of Andrija Hebrang was declared in those areas liberated by the Croatian Partisan forces. In 1943, the Partisans formed new political councils ZAVNOH and ZAVNOBiH (the "state anti-fascist council of people's liberation" of Croatia and of Bosnia and Herzegovina) that would later function as the interim government.
The Serbian royalist guerilla the Chetniks who were ostensibly formed to protect the Serbs from the Ustaša, in turn committed atrocities against Croats in retaliation. Later in the war, both Ustaše and Četnici collaborated with the Axis powers and fought together against the Partisans.
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End of the war
In August of 1944 there was atempt by foreign Minister in NDH government Mladen Lorković and Minister of War Ante Vokić to execute a coup d'etat against Ante Pavelić. The coup (called Lorković-Vokić coup) failed and conspirators were executed.
The Ustaša army was mostly defeated by the start of 1945, but continued fighting for a while after the German surrender on May 9th, 1945. They were soon overpowered and the Independent State of Croatia effectively ceased to exist in May 1945, near the end of the war. The advance of Tito's partisan forces, joined by the Soviet Red Army, caused mass retreat of the Ustaše.
In May 1945, a large group composed of anti-communists, Ustaša followers and of civilians was on a retreat from the partisan forces, heading west towards Italy and Austria. Ante Pavelić detached from the group and fled to Austria, Italy and finally Argentina. The rest of the group negotiated passage with the British forces on the Austrian-Slovenian border. After they refused to accept them (cf. Operation Keelhaul), Partisans are said to have executed up to 150,000 people in the Bleiburg massacre, named after the village of Bleiburg near that border near which some were executed, though many weren't killed there but on a "death march" back into Yugoslavia.
The second Yugoslavia came into being later that year.
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See also
Ustaše
History of Yugoslavia
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Military leaders of the Ustaše army
Jure Francetić
Maks Luburić
Rafael Boban
Dinko Šakić
Božidar Kavran
Ivan Ico Kirin
Ivica Matković
Ljubo Miloš
Ante (Vitez) Moskov
Juraj Juco Rukavina
Tomislav (Vitez) Sertić
Vjekoslav Servetzy
Slavko (Vitez) Stanzer
Vjekoslav (Vitez) Vrančić
Antun Vrban
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Political leaders of the NDH
Ante Pavelić
Slavko Kvaternik
Mirko Puk
Andrija Artuković
Ivan Petrić
Lovro Šušič
Mile Budak
Ivica Frković
Jozo Dumandžič
Milovan Zanič
Osman Kulenović
Džafer beg Kulenović
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Croatian Waffen SS units
13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)
IX Waffen Alpine Corps of the SS (Croatian)
Post je objavljen 31.01.2006. u 21:04 sati.